Overcoming a Lifetime of Stage Fright

By Sara Solovitch

May 30, 2015

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CreditCreditJosephin Ritschel

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — IT had been 40 years since my last recital, but the first time I played the piano at Mineta San Jose International Airport, my body responded right on cue. My hands turned wet with sweat, my heart pounded, my feet gave a soft little drum roll on the floor.

My teacher’s other students — mostly in middle or high school — had taken their turns before me, and while they played I reminded myself to breathe: inhale for four counts, hold for two, let it out for seven. But when it was my turn, I was gulping for air. I bumbled my way through a Debussy prelude, knowing that I looked like a cornered animal and sounded like a robot.

I was there because, at age 59, I was determined to overcome a lifetime of stage fright. I had quit playing the piano when I was 19 because of my anxiety. Upon returning to it, I discovered that I loved it more than ever. I practiced as much as I could, sometimes for two or three hours a day. And eventually, an obvious question emerged. Why? Why bother if I couldn’t even play for a few friends or family members?

My stage fright still defined me and it seemed as unique as my fingerprints. I could speak before an assembled crowd, open up a hive of bees in my backyard and ride shotgun in a bush plane over frozen tundra. But playing the piano? That terrified me.

I decided to give myself a year: I would resume serious study, practice four or five hours a day, and finally give a recital for a hall full of people.

The airport was my teacher’s idea. Recognizing that I avoided any opportunity to play in public, she had decreed that the baby grand piano in Terminal B, just outside the Southwest baggage claim area, was an ideal place to practice performing.

Over the next year, I would return to it many times and with each performance, it became a little easier. The baggage conveyor belts groaned; travelers gabbed on their cellphones; skycaps occasionally gathered around with their coffee cups and bagged lunches. Nobody cared if I made a mistake.

Playing at the airport became my version of exposure training, a therapy that’s all about doing the thing you hate most, over and over again. The basic idea is simple enough: Through repeated exposure, the brain learns not to be afraid.

Psychologists have for years used it to treat all kinds of anxiety, from fear of heights to that of small spaces, insects and public bathrooms. These days, they typically employ a technique of gradual desensitization. For example, a person who is terrified of spiders will at first be exposed to pictures of spiders, before being brought face to face with a spider in a cage. Eventually, the spider will be let out, allowed to crawl about and, if all goes well, get touched and petted by the arachnophobe.

But before I could retrain my brain, I had to get control over my body. I had to change my physical response to the prospect of performance: the rise in blood pressure, the increased heart rate, the adrenaline storm. There was, I soon learned, a simple way to eliminate all those nasty effects.

“A beta blocker will cut all that,” Michael Fanselow, a neuroscientist at U.C.L.A., told me. “The fear won’t go away, but it will stop the feedback loop. And if you combine that with exposure training, it’s the best chance you’ll have. It’s really about retraining your brain not to be afraid.”

When I asked my internist about it, she immediately said: “Oh, sure, the public speaking pill. I take one whenever I give a talk.”

And just like that, I joined an underground cult of actors, athletes, public speakers, classical musicians and everyday test takers who constitute a steady niche market for a medication most commonly prescribed for high blood pressure and heart disease. Beta blockers work by blocking the effect of adrenaline and slowing the heart rate; they’re one of the most prescribed medications in the United States.

Despite a lack of recent studies, various surveys over the last three decades have estimated that 20 percent to 30 percent of symphony musicians regularly use beta blockers to quell their nerves. According to one longstanding joke, an IV drip hangs over every orchestra pit in the world. Yet many classical musicians call the pill a crutch that delivers a dull and soulless performance. Some would rather admit to smoking weed than to popping one of the little orange pills. Angela Chan, a pianist in Montreal, told me it made her feel like a zombie on the one occasion she tried it. “It was the most devastating experience I ever had,” she said. “I became a machine to puncture all the notes.”

That prospect didn’t deter me. The next time I visited the airport — this time alone — I went armed. And just as Dr. Fanselow had predicted, the drug didn’t erase my fear. What it did was leave me with an absence of its physical manifestations. My hands didn’t drip with sweat. My fingers didn’t tremble. My feet didn’t shake.

For once, I could think clearly enough to focus on my breathing and all the other advice I’d been gathering. While laying out my music books, I silently repeated my mantra over and over again. I willed myself to wait, visualize the sound of the music and center myself. Then, amid the constant interruptions — the recorded announcements, the suitcases rolling by, the parents yelling at their kids — I played Bach, Brahms, Tcherepnin and Debussy.

I started going every other week, and sometimes a small audience of travelers with time to kill grew around me. As they sipped their Peet’s coffees, I played my heart out. Once, when I stood up and gathered my things, they actually applauded and called out their thanks. Most of the time, I was completely ignored, my music just another layer in the airport din.

The more I played there, the more confident I became. And one day, when I went to the airport to pick my son up from a flight, I brought my music but forgot the beta blocker. I played anyway. My brain apparently recognized it for the low-stakes situation it was because I barely broke a sweat. I still had to remind myself to keep breathing, but my hands stayed dry.

In my year devoted to the conquest of stage fright, I explored every tool I could find — from deep breathing techniques to biofeedback and cognitive behavior therapy. I worked with a Juilliard performance coach and consulted psychologists. I took lessons in the Alexander Technique, a system of body awareness and movement that helps relieve old patterns of stress and is favored by musicians. And I acquired a collection of talismans: a grainy black-and-white photograph of a beloved aunt, which I kept propped against my piano rack at home; a wooden amulet that I dug out of a box of old high school mementos; a pair of earrings that I was convinced always brought me good luck.

I wish I could say I never relied on a beta blocker again. As my big recital approached, my performance coach urged me to forego the pill. Instead, he said, I should channel my adrenaline to give a passionate, exciting performance.

I imagined myself sitting at the 7-foot Yamaha grand in the church hall I’d rented, surrounded by 50 or more people, and instantly knew I wasn’t enough of a gambler. Much had changed over the year, not least my relationship with music. I’d initially been driven to prove that I could overcome my fear, grit my teeth and get through the music without falling to pieces. Now, even though my technical abilities had improved significantly, I cared less about the mistakes and more about communication, about creating a connection with people. That’s what any good performance does; it connects with its audience on an emotional level. I’d spent so many hours behind closed doors, practicing and practicing, and now I wanted to share.

But overcoming stage fright wasn’t like bungee jumping. I couldn’t just leap into the void and assume the rope would hold. Some musicians thrive on the adrenaline of live performance. They’re the ones who play better before an audience than they play in the practice room.

That’s not me. Despite all the months of practice and preparation, I never did fully manage to embrace my adrenaline.

My recital consisted of Debussy, Brahms and all the other music that I’d been performing at the airport in San Jose. I made some mistakes but I didn’t fall to pieces, not by a long shot. There were even times that I felt like I was soaring.

The beta blocker provided a safety net. And half a pill was all I needed.

The author of the forthcoming book “Playing Scared: A History and Memoir of Stage Fright.”